My point is about logic, not what buddhist are told they "have to believe" in order to be buddhist...
My point is that (disclaimer: I dont think anyone should kill themselves!):
Hindusim: The goal of life, according to the Advaita school, is to realize that one's ātman is identical to Brahman, the supreme soul.
you cant accomplish this by ending your own physical existence.
Christianity: The goal is realize that you are a guilty sinner, and to beg for forgiveness in the hopes of either avoiding afterlife pain/or gaining afterlife living at all
you cant accomplish this by ending your own physical existence.
Islam: The goal is complete submission to allah (to the point that you are willing to die)
you cant accomplish this by ending your own physical existence, unless it is in order to bring about the will of Allah.
Buddhism: In Buddhism, suffering is meaningless, except insofar as it it exhausts bad karma. The principle aim of Buddhism is to end pointless suffering.
it seems rather obvious to anyone that this IS accomplishable by ending your own existence. I know some people are going to say the Buddhists arent against life, they are just against anyone suffering more than they have to. This would be fine, but that would be classic epicurean (not the modern usage of epicurean), and not buddhism. Buddhist literally want to transcend away from anything worthwhile on this earth, because it might cause suffering.
Buddhist live in the self protection mode, there is nothing that drives them to leave their little box of less suffering. Therefore, their main goal is just to limit suffering. Ending their own existence achieves this goal. The only way this would not accomplish the objective, is if there was more suffering awaiting you after, like reincarnation. Without a belief in reincarnation, wouldnt buddhism just be another form of nihilism? I mean any belief system that finds no point in living might count as nihilistic in some regards.
So then at the end of the day, is buddhism really a middle path? Its either another form of nihilism, or its another supernaturalism religion that requires you to believe in reincarnation. How is reincarnation any more believable than any other deistic religion?
Not to get all persnippity, but your logic does not concern me.
"Zen is what happens after rational thought ceases."
I would say that it is a fallacy of logical thought to believe that all things can be "solved"/understood/whatever via logical thought. Meditation is largely about calming the "monkey mind." Try following your thoughts, I bet it goes something like this "TypC, keyboard, I'm hungry, TypC, exercise, hot woman, mouse, monitor, I'm hungry, ceiling, etc, etc, etc. "Sure, maybe not those exact thoughts, but some other thoughts will surely stand in there place. By taming the monkey mind, one is able to better focus, and to have more "space" between thoughts. All the logic in the world won't get you that. Heck, it will probably just get in the way. Not to bash on logic or logical thought, it has its place and we Buddhists and others can do it too, but we don't solely rely on it is my point.
IMO, Hinduism and Buddhism really aren't that different, well not at there top levels anyways. Which is funny because SO much of Buddhism was just a counterculture or movement against the prevailing hindu thoughts of the day. Think of Protestantism as a reaction or countercultural movement to Catholicism as another related example of that. "Oh look, you all believe in this "soul" or atman, well we're gonna snub you and say "no soul" or anatman!"
Okay, maybe thats just being blabby and besides the point. As one who practices advaita-vedanta, the type or school of hinduism that you are referring to, let me say this: Discovering that your "individual soul" or atman is identical to the fundamental ground of being "brahman" is basically done by "letting go" of one's soul [well, more like letting go of attachment to it], which in my mind is not one iota different form a Buddhist going "I have no soul/'fundamental existence' and when I follow my consciousness back to its original source, I find only formlessness or emptiness or basic unconditioned awareness." Expressed differently, the point of both Buddhism, and Hinduism [and Taoism for that matter!, and others] is liberation or enlightenment or emancipation or discovery of what self/not-self truly is, or whatever you wanna call that. Physically killing yourself does not accomplish that in any of those cases.
This is apparently pretty "out there" in the mind of your average westerner, but there are a variety of indirect and direct reasons that support or indicate reincarnation/rebirth. Put simply, when the rishis [seers] and others looked deep within their own being, they discovered imprints or impacts from previous births that carried over. They sensed this is in a very direct way. Certain portions of a person's being transmigrate from lifetime to lifetime, others do not. They saw that in a very direct way as well. Your average person on the street probably isn't going to much value or trust in this sort of "psychic" or "clairvoyant" "evidence", and in many respects why should they???, but these things weren't just pulled out of the air willy-nilly. One thing I personally like to emphasize is the following: EVERYTHING that gets talked about is something that, if one is willing to put the time and effort necessary for the training, one can "discover" or "investigate" or "verify" for ones self. We are practitioners, we *practice* these things. For us, this is NOT a faith, at least not in any blind or removed sense. "I don't need faith, I have experience"- wasn't that william james [19th century american psychologist]
Also remember, that historically Hinduism and Buddhism obviously originated in asian cultures. In those cultures teachings/beliefs like karma and reincarnation are simply cultural givens. They weren't scientific in outlook and values in the way that out culture is here today.
Also, note the difference between "I THINK committing suicide will end my existence forever because I don't believe in reincarnation" and "Committing suicide will end my existence forever because I don't believe in reincarnation." What is is, what is not is not, one's "beliefs" will not change something like that.
Do I understand your point? Yes. Does it bother me personally? no.
Its dangerous to apply logic in situations where it does not hold sway. Many things in life are illogical, or non-logical.
"Why do you suffer?
Because 99.999% of everything that you think,
do,
and say
is for yourself,
and there ins't one." Wei wu wei [I think it is anyways]
the sanksrit term is dukha, usually translated as "suffering", but perhaps "non-contentment" would be a much better translation. I think it is very easy to misunderstand or misinterpret Buddhism, and goodness knows the translations of terms and ideas often don't help there. Also, people often see Buddhism as a "philosophy", and perhaps to an extent it is, but basically the Buddha found a way to enlightenment, based upon experience and practices not just mere rumination and thinking and philosophizing, and then taught a pathway or "vehicle" so that others could follow in his footsteps and replicate his accomplishments. If someone wants to understand Buddhism, go practice it, merely philosophizing and ruminating and thinking and logical deduction and whatever else won't get you to its goal.
In one single simple sentence, the ultimate purpose of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and others is: "Discover the fundamental nature of your existence." Ways of doing that may differ, experiences may differ, interpretations of those experiences may differ, the value placed upon those experiences, the terminology used to describe those experiences may differ, all that stuff may differ. But the answer for "what are you, at your most fundamental level of being" is the same: undifferentiated empty formless attributeless consciousness, one without a second. But how does one describe that to others? What labels do you put on that that is without attributes? Emptiness??? formlessness??? not-self? self? atman? brahman? tao? kensho? satori? dharmakaya? suchness? tathagatagarbha? turiya? turiya-tita? Mind? Self? Buddha-nature? All of those, and more have been used, but they are just terms, just words. The experience to which those terms are applied is what matters. At the level of the fundamental nature of existence, there are no differences between, say Buddhism, and Hinduism and whoever else reaches this level, that I am aware of. Differences between Buddhism, Hinduism, etc don't show up until someone decides to leave a "method of training", and associated terminology, behind so that others may also peer into and discover the fundamental nature of there being.
Beware of philosophizing where it does not apply. Personally, I really like Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche's discussion of Buddhist ideas, and in particularly how westerners often misinterpret or misunderstand them.